Friday, May 11, 2007

"Last year, just before the students returned to the campus of the Roman Catholic Georgetown University, the school's Protestant chaplain informed six evangelical student ministries that they were being 'disafilliated.' That is, they could not use campus facilities for their events, could not advertise their events on campus, and could not use the Georgetown name or logo.

InterVarsity Christian Fellowship was one of the affected ministries, and the irony could not have been sharper: the daughter of IVCF president Alec Hill was a Georgetown student."

This was a break from the usual legal issues -- in other instances public universities had attempted to "disaffiliate" InterVarsity due to their requirement that officers subscribe to Christian beliefs. Legal action has been effective in these cases (and the law seems to support InterVarsity's stand).

But in this case Georgetown University, being private, could ban any group that was not Catholic, if they so desired.

"I give a lot of credit to our staff and student leaders who did not overreact. They were firm but diplomatic in their dealing with university officials. We are grateful for the good spirit of dialog shown by Georgetown as this agreement was worked out."

It's good to see it could be handled in this way; it is far more satisfying than needing to resort to the courts to enforce what should be a common-sense decision based on existing law.